the karnatzel jerkbait

Some people are like magnets to strange shit. It is not as though they choose to be, or derive any pleasure out of it, it is just that weird stuff tends to happen around them more often than anyone else. If it is true that some have a Midas touch while others have the opposite, that is everything they touch turns to crap, it also seems reasonable to assume that for whatever reason, there are those individuals that draw forth or extract what can be considered to be the strangest element in any given scenario as well. Case in point. My unnamed friend (no not me) is a pretty normal guy yet somehow seems to draw out the weird factor inherent to any environment. Even fishing becomes weird when he is in the vicinity. Just last week we were fishing for muskies when he gets a nice fish to follow boatside and starts to figure eight under the boat. His sunglasses, which had been giving him problems all day, finally fell for the last time, bouncing off the side chamber of the inflatable, but of course not before he he tried to grab them and missed, loudly banging the side chamber of the boat, which then spooked the musky who bolted just as the glasses fell and sank into the water, the timing so impeccable as they landed square on the fishes head and it swam away looking like quite the cool cat wearing my friends shades….

Another occasion also saw things go pretty weird when we ran out of live bait on the lake. While there was no shortage of artificials to choose, both plastics and hardbaits, he chose instead, perhaps due to the bottle of wine he drank with lunch, to use a nine inch strip of kosher karnatzel, which for those not in the know, is a thin and long beef sausage loaded with meat and sodium. While a million jews as well as others can’t be wrong, as it is quite the noshable treat, it did sort of seem wrong to me at first, as it didn’t seem to meet (meat) the requirements of a good musky bait. However, its color and action were impressive, much more so than the plastics we had on hand, with the added benefit that it stayed on the hook after even hours of hard casting. The same could not be said about a minnow. An hour or so after working the weedlines with his karnatzel, he reeled in and left the piece of meat on top of the water, next to the boat while he rested. He didn’t realize he had a follow and no sooner than he turned his attentions back to the cooler, maybe looking for a carrot or cucumber or chicken leg he could use as a popper, or for another bottle of wine, there was a large splash and we both turned to witness a big musky inhale his karnatzel and proceeded to swim away with the unattended rod in tow as we watched dumbfounded. Within seconds, the rod gradually dissappeared into the dark depths, never to be seen again, although on the plus side we did indeed confirm that karnatzel has its merits in any tackle box…

postscript: I’m pretty sure the next time we go out together we will catch a musky wearing shades, chewing on a karnatzel, and trailing a loomis rod behind it….

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